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Development ended, game appears to be dead. https://forums.artillery.com/discussion/911/end-of-development -Jinro | ||
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TaShadan
Germany1967 Posts
There are some situations where lower acceleration and turnrates makes sense as it can add unique microinteractions, though I think one needs to be quite careful of adding this into to many units. Broodwar did that and it works fine in most cases. IMO the micro looks even more intense compared to sc2. | ||
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
On July 13 2014 21:12 Incognoto wrote: Animations are more in the realm of game design than engine design, no? So the SC2 engine wouldn't be that great, it's just that the game designers engineered units to be ultra responsive? Is that what you're saying? I would agree to that. Eh, I suppose. Keep in mind that you still need an engine to be able to support high responsiveness and deal with network/ai lag properly, although nowadays one would expect that not to be a problem at least for experienced developers. In most modern games I would imagine it's a design choice. On July 13 2014 22:54 TaShadan wrote: Ehm Muta micro is much better/responsive in BW... which means the engine is capable of handling fast responses. It were designer choices to have non responsive units though. The only problem BW has is the bad pathfinding. Its much better in sc2 but they "cheated" by using clump mechanics and the ability that units can walk through own units (or the units step aside) which is not the case in BW. Yeah, air units are an exception because they operated on fundamentally different rules from ground units and never had to deal with obstacles. Brood War was actually really responsive in terms of input lag, but it is indeed the pathfinding that made it feel clunky. Actually the underlying issue that caused pathfinding to be clunky that was the fact Starcraft 1 engine was based on a discrete grid space. It's essentially the same technology Warcraft was built on, they just added the fake isometric aesthetics and made grid tiles smaller to accommodate that. Clumping in SC2 is also a design choice, not so much a manner of cheating. If SC2 design team chose to do so, they could easily have emulated SC1 flocking and pathfinding without all the issues of SC1 pathfinding (because the game is in continuous 3D space). | ||
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Hider
Denmark9375 Posts
Broodwar did that and it works fine in most cases. IMO the micro looks even more intense compared to sc2. I don't really agree here. I feel BW's biggest strenght relative to Sc2 (in terms of units) are the moving shots of air units, Lurker , Spider Mines and Reavers. Neither of these advantages are related to lower reponsiveness (if anything it's the contrary). There are 3 variables in the Starcaft 2 editor which impacts the responsiveness of the units: - Turn rate - Acceleration - Damage point (how long the units needs to stand still before attacking) By lowering turn rate you can in some situations deincentivize kiting in favour of only moving back the injured units (which replicates Hydralisk vs Zealot micro in BW). There are however no unit interactions where this realistically can be applied to the current SC2. By reducing acceleration you can in some situations create a similar effect as through lowering the turn rate (if it's too easy to kite a certain unit, then you can give the unit a lower acceleration which creates no advantage to kiting relative to pulling back injured/targetted on an indivdual basis instead). Lower acceleration can also be used to create the Marine vs. Banshee micro where a banshee can kite Marines (perfectly) but it takes damage when it wants to start the attack as it in this proces deaccelerates and thus needs to reaccelerate. Another benefit of using lower acceleration on certain units occurs when you want to make sure that unit X can be out on the map and still be capable of escaping from enemy units. This, however, requires a relatively high level of movement speed, and the combo of that high level of movement speed + max acceleration can in many situations result in poor micro interactions/huge imbalances. Thus, then it makes sense to reduce acceleration while going for higher movement speed. Adding a damage point is often times one of the most hurtfurl thing you can do as it unlike lower acceleration or lower turn rate rarely creates a different micro-interaction. Instead, it often times become impractical to move the unit around as it needs to stand still for so long to shoot. The reason for (sometimes) using a high damage point is to avoid situations where kiting becomes way OP. For instance, without a damage point hellions would be extremely effective at killing Speedlings. This is however mostly due to the way the splash works where speedlings would stand 0 chance fighting hellions without a damage point. In many other situations, it is however, from my experience better to put damage point at 0 and tweak variables such as attack range or the movement speed of the units to create a similar effect while maintaining a higher responsiveness of the unit. SC2 units have a default damage point of 0.167, and only certain units have lower (Mutalisks, Marine/Maurauder comes to mind). I think when you start with a new game/rebalance everything, the default values should be maximum responsiveness as it in my opinion feels much better to control those units. I don't really believe it's a coincidence that the Marines probably is the most popular unit in the game. The only reason for why you would make the control less responsive (and thus less fun to control IMO) is if there are other huge advantages that can not otherwise be created by maintaining maxiumum responsiveness. But you should only change damage point, turn rate or acceleration if you have havde made certain that you can improve the current micro interactions by tweaking those variables. | ||
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Magggrig
56 Posts
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TaShadan
Germany1967 Posts
I don't really agree here. I feel BW's biggest strenght relative to Sc2 (in terms of units) are the moving shots of air units, Lurker , Spider Mines and Reavers. Neither of these advantages are related to lower reponsiveness (if anything it's the contrary). I know. That is actually what i meant. This was my response to this: There are some situations where lower acceleration and turnrates makes sense as it can add unique microinteractions, though I think one needs to be quite careful of adding this into to many units. Reavers have a low turnrate, are super slow and the attack delay is huge (well the first shoot delay is not that huge). It is still awesome to micro with a shuttle involved. It might be only my oppinion but i prefer watching Boxers awesome marine micro (with attack delayed marines) instead of boring sc2 marine stutter step which literally everyone can perform. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9375 Posts
Reavers have a low turnrate, are super slow and the attack delay is huge (well the first shoot delay is not that huge). It is still awesome to micro with a shuttle involved. I am not 100% sure of this, but I actually think Reavers (based on the 3 variables I presented) is very responsive. Instead, it's just really slow which fits well into the Reaver due to the synergy with Warp Prism. You can fire a shot with a Reaver and immediately pick it up with a Warp Prism, which IMO makes it work well. The attack-delay is neccesary in order for a Reaver + Warp Prism to not be able to "kite" infinitely. Question here is ofc whether the same effect could be replicated if the Reaver had a lower range. Perhaps if it had a range of 7.5, it could attack immedediately. Though, it's not really super needed here as the Reaver already feels very micro-intensive. It might be only my oppinion but i prefer watching Boxers awesome marine micro (with attack delayed marines) instead of boring sc2 marine stutter step which literally everyone can perform. If you think Sc2 Marines is only about stutter-stepping your quite wrong. The fantastic thing about SC2 Marines is that you need to do all types of micro. You can easily compare FPV vods of terran players in BW to terran players in Sc2 and notice that in Sc2 you spend a lot more time micro'ing your bio units than in Sc2. Very often, bio is simply "1a2a3a" and then once in a while they move backwards when lurkers burrow/dark swarm goes up. Further, I think you need to be careful about comparing "typical micro" to "highlight-micro", which doesn't arise as often. And at last, with Sc2 Marines you would be able to perform the same type of micro vs Lurkers. I belive it's the Lurker that is the well-designed unit here. Not the BW Marine. The damage point of the Marine doesn't accomplish anything from a micro-perspective. | ||
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TaShadan
Germany1967 Posts
On July 15 2014 01:13 Hider wrote: I am not 100% sure of this, but I actually think Reavers (based on the 3 variables I presented) is very responsive. Instead, it's just really slow which fits well into the Reaver due to the synergy with Warp Prism. You can fire a shot with a Reaver and immediately pick it up with a Warp Prism, which IMO makes it work well. The attack-delay is neccesary in order for a Reaver + Warp Prism to not be able to "kite" infinitely. Question here is ofc whether the same effect could be replicated if the Reaver had a lower range. Perhaps if it had a range of 7.5, it could attack immedediately. Though, it's not really super needed here as the Reaver already feels very micro-intensive. If you think Sc2 Marines is only about stutter-stepping your quite wrong. The fantastic thing about SC2 Marines is that you need to do all types of micro. You can easily compare FPV vods of terran players in BW to terran players in Sc2 and notice that in Sc2 you spend a lot more time micro'ing your bio units than in Sc2. Very often, bio is simply "1a2a3a" and then once in a while they move backwards when lurkers burrow/dark swarm goes up. Further, I think you need to be careful about comparing "typical micro" to "highlight-micro", which doesn't arise as often. And at last, with Sc2 Marines you would be able to perform the same type of micro vs Lurkers. I belive it's the Lurker that is the well-designed unit here. Not the BW Marine. The damage point of the Marine doesn't accomplish anything from a micro-perspective. ROFL yeah i can see you played alot of bw... | ||
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Tenda
United States146 Posts
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9375 Posts
ROFL yeah i can see you played alot of bw... Well point is that if you watch FPV of BW pro's, this whole part about avoiding Lurker Spines or the "cool" micro that we see is so incredibly rare. That's why the comparison to Marines stutter stepping to Boxers lurker micro is extremely deceiving. From my experience watching BW FPV's, it's amove forward, stand still or right click back 99% of the time. Your welcome to go find FPV's where you see a terran player execute a different type of micro multiple times during a game. I hope by skillshots they're referring to something like psionic storm or smt. Im glad that they are taking this approach, because that's basically what I advocated for in one of my posts on the last page. Why are all projectiles of the abilities so fast in Sc2? I would use this formula; - If there is a dynamic after the ability has been casted --> the effect can be instant/spell can be unavoidable - If it's not, then it needs to have a relatively slow projectile so the enemy can have a reasonable probability of avoid taking (full damage) if he reacts well. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9375 Posts
On July 15 2014 19:08 Grumbels wrote: Game design has to be the softest option imaginable in the academic world. Somehow I've never seen anything beyond blatantly obvious coming out of it. Kind of sad that Sean, who at least has some background in mathematics, is reduced to writing 'fun is good'. I hope these posts are purely for PR, which would at least explain them. Well, I think they haven't really started looking into unitbased design yet, so they are still very very green here. They can only use relatively vague statements for now. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On July 15 2014 19:42 Hider wrote: Well, I think they haven't really started looking into unitbased design yet, so they are still very very green here. They can only use relatively vague statements for now. I think it's a bit odd though. If you have just one unit you can hardly test the game. I recall they said they were testing with only basic army unit(s) (not going to dig through Day[9]'s video), but adding more units to the game does more than simply adding timings and strategic diversity, it changes the core of the gameplay. For instance, how can you test your economy model (resource gathering, expansions and map control and such) -- which really is the core of your gameplay -- without having faster vs slower units, ability to take map control, units that scale differently to encourage trading, and so on. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9375 Posts
On July 15 2014 21:45 Grumbels wrote: I think it's a bit odd though. If you have just one unit you can hardly test the game. I recall they said they were testing with only basic army unit(s) (not going to dig through Day[9]'s video), but adding more units to the game does more than simply adding timings and strategic diversity, it changes the core of the gameplay. For instance, how can you test your economy model (resource gathering, expansions and map control and such) -- which really is the core of your gameplay -- without having faster vs slower units, ability to take map control, units that scale differently to encourage trading, and so on. Yeh, it's a good point, and I don't know whether you can actually make these controlled experiments. One could ofc argue that they are trying to make sure that gameplay is fun regardless of unit designs and this means that the units can be free'd up and we only have to focus on unit vs interactions, without taking into account whether the unit rewards turtly/boring play. But in this proces it could also be possible that the gameplay will only work when you have normal units and that "special" types of mobile unit doesn't fit into the model. It's tough to say though without having played it, and I think we should be careful about making preemptive asusmptions. I would however have proceed differently. I think it simply made more sense to look at BW and Sc2 and see which types of unit designs worked and copy the formula's of the most popular units into Artillery and use that for the core design of units. That will include; - Units which have large synergy with dropships (Reaver) - Harassoriented that are good at creating multitaskbased situations but cannot win battles alone gets really strong stats (Vulture, Medivac) - Make core units very responsive (Sc2 marine) - Make units with different "modes" where each mode have different advantages/disadvantages (Siege Tanks, Widow Mine, Lurker, Viking) - Create a couple of simple spellcasters which either have slow projectiles or instant spells with remicro potential (Psy Storm) I think you then could create 2 races with 6-8 units each following these two concepts. And then the overall model can be tweaked in order to make sure that these types of "fun" units fits into the model. | ||
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Tenda
United States146 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
The biggest goal with Atlas is to have lots of interaction. In traditional RTS games, a match is often decided in one big, climactic final engagement. But, I find battling/microing/positioning to be incredibly fun. So, how do you encourage people to get their scared butts out there and battle away? Frankly, it's a pain in the ass, but I think we're making progress. We have a respawn system where you get partial refunds for your dead units and that seems to be making players less scared to fight. There is more in the reddit thread, but I thought this was the only bit with specific information. Actually, can anyone explain to me the point of the mechanic they came up with? I don't see how it promotes engagements at all (or well, it seems unconvincing upon preliminary inspection). Is it about making use of player psychology or something? | ||
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Hider
Denmark9375 Posts
Actually, can anyone explain to me the point of the mechanic they came up with? I don't see how it promotes engagements at all (or well, it seems unconvincing upon preliminary inspection). Is it about making use of player psychology or something? Yeh I wonder whether this actually has a real long-lasting effect or its just psychologically. But I guess the argument is that if the costs of losing a battle is less, then the risk/reward changes and could encourage more battle. However, if this applies to the oppoennt as well, then why would it create an overall extra value of engaging for player x? One thing it does do though is to make the game more back-and-fourth as it gives second changes. It could also have the downside of players just constantly spewing away bad mobile units for postionally/economic gains. Too some extent that was what you did with mech in WOL Sc2. Hellions were so bad in the lategame, but you had excessive minerals so you just suciided them for ineffective harass. While that kind of "action" was better than nothing, it still kinda felt dumb. I think its more interesting to incentivize harass where micro is important and rewarded. That's why I feel marine drops are so much more cool than sucidied cost-ineffective hellions in wol. And if the cost-effieincy itself isn't as important in Project Atlas, but the harass instead more relies upon doing it to gain longer-term advantages, then it could feel very anticlimatic quite quickly. Overall, I still feel my solution for creating actionpacked back-and fourth is a bit cleaner. It consist of four steps 1) Increase the time it takes for "core"-units to reach enemy base (core units = units that are good in straight-up battles) 2) Buff harass-focussed units 3) Add in defenders-advantage mechanics in the game which rewards battles in the middle of the map, but makes it challenging to end the game (creep spread is a good example here). 4) All types of unit compositions must have different types of escape-mechanics, so the commitment to an engagement is limited. But it's definitely possible I am wrong here, and that this mechanic they have implemented is very effective at creating desired gameplay. Regardless, I like that they are testing new stuff, but they also need to look at whether the effect is working for the "right reasons" or whether it will be lame over the longer haul. | ||
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-Archangel-
Croatia7457 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
Part 1: In our last game design post, I wrote that game design is not all that different than story writing. In a story, the main character faces increasingly difficult obstacles and challenges which build up to a dramatic final climax. Those struggles are what make the story exciting. In a multiplayer games, story arc experiences are equally as critical since you are the protagonist. Have you ever played a game with huge periods of boredom? Where you daydreamed while waiting for your turn? Where the exciting moments have long passed? These are symptoms of a problematic story arc. Unfortunately, multiplayer games are non-linear — the players make the challenges for each other, not the designer. Since players can make widely different or even unexpected decisions, how does the designer help impose a story arc experience in a multiplayer, competitive game? Let’s examine some core issues and problem areas to provide some structure to our question! read more... Part 2: Two weeks ago I wrote an article which introduced the problems of building a story arc in a multiplayer game. I wrote about three challenges:
This week we're going to examine a number of games that I feel have a fantastic story arc and discuss the mechanics that make them awesome. I'll even include a few thoughts about Atlas! read more... | ||
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